Posted on 07/20/2020 8:40:10 AM PDT by Perseverando
Virginia kindergarten students will learn about institutional racism alongside the alphabet, according to a new curriculum created for the upcoming school year.
Loudoun County is adding "social justice" to the mission of teaching elementary school students reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Washington, D.C., suburb—the richest county in the country—has teamed up with the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) education arm Teaching Tolerance to develop its new curriculum. The proposed lesson plan will restructure history and social studies classes to emphasize slavery as fundamental to American society for students from kindergarten to the fifth grade.
"Sugarcoating or ignoring slavery until later grades makes students more upset by or even resistant to true stories about American history," the curriculum reads. "Long before we teach algebra, we teach its component parts. We should structure history instruction the same way."
Not every Loudoun County educator is on board with the administration's direction. A longtime elementary school teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said that the school system had always taught students about the reality of slavery—lessons that typically begin in the fourth grade. She said the administrative focus to push racial politics on students who do not yet know how to read is motivated by politics, rather than education.
"I teach lower grades in elementary school.… [Never before] did I have to teach about slavery," the teacher said. "Our standards were always [to] teach about famous Americans, George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., people like that. But, it was all very general and the bigger picture, we highlighted their accomplishments."
The new Teaching Tolerance kindergarten curriculum requires teachers to explain social justice theories to five-year-olds. The Loudoun County elementary school teacher believes this curriculum will prove divisive for children who lack the maturity to deal with the subject.
"What they're really trying to do is divide people as early as they can, starting now with kindergarteners. They're really going to be inciting hate," the teacher said. "They're pointing out that there's ‘whiteness' and ‘blackness' and that's crazy. We never taught about that in school…. We learn about how to get along with one another and be kind and respect others. But now, with this new curriculum that they're adding, it's going to do the total opposite."
The curriculum was first introduced by the Virginia Department of Education's superintendent. When asked how the SPLC guidelines were funded and whether the guidelines were mandatory across the state, the state's education department deflected.
"The state Board of Education approves content standards and curriculum frameworks for history and social studies," a state education department spokesman said. "Local school boards are responsible for developing or adopting curriculum aligned with the state standards and framework." Loudoun County's school board did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The guide encourages educators to create opportunities for kindergarten, first, and second grade students to learn about "activism and action civics."
"Students should study examples of role models from the past and present, and ask themselves, ‘how can I make a difference?'" the guide says. "These conversations [about slavery] should lead into discussions about current injustices—particularly those that continue to disenfranchise and oppress the descendants of enslaved people—and possibilities for activism and reform."
Max Eden, an education policy expert at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, said the curriculum's focus on political activism and the horrors of slavery is not suitable for kindergarten students. He said the movement to inject politics into elementary school classrooms has gained momentum since the New York Times launched its controversial 1619 Project.
"Students aren't prepared when they're five years old to develop a nuanced sense of history and political processes, and pros and cons of different side effects, and unintended consequences," Eden said. "What the real goal of this is, by introducing [slavery] this young, is to try to get the left-wing, Nikole Hannah-Jones, [SPLC] meta-political narrative into kids' heads as soon as possible, which is basically trying to compel them to believe that because slavery happened, therefore, America is evil and you must follow the leftist idea of … how we need to overturn power in society."
Parents are also upset that social justice would explicitly be taught in a public elementary school. A Loudoun County parent of two—who also spoke on the condition of anonymity—told the Free Beacon he was disappointed in the school district.
"SPLC is pushing Marxist ideology more or less. They're really pushing those concepts of ‘revolution' and ‘dismantling the system' that we have," the father said. "So rather than everyone coming together and building something great together, it's about destroying what's been built."
The school board is asking parents concerned about the "social justice" curriculum to fill out a survey requesting the board reconsider instructional materials.
SPLC did not respond to a request for comment.
Back in the 1980s, when I was a schoolchild in a different part of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we had a “social studies” curriculum. In first grade, we learned to respect certain famous forbears, especially Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Robert Edward Lee, Thomas Johnathan Jackson (”Stonewall”), and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis followed. In fourth grade, we covered Virginia history from the Powhatan confederacy to the Confederate States of America and discussed slavery extensively and repeatedly.
In the other component of the curriculum, the intermittent “passport to the world” program, we learned about other countries. These countries with few exceptions were either allies of the United States of America or brutally repressed Communist nations. We also participated in “duck-and-cover” drills in case ostensibly of imminent nuclear attack from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, these drills ceased, but they instilled a sense of national solidarity and profound fear of the Communist menace. According to schoolteachers then, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, ever stronger and smarter than the Americans, sought to exploit any weakness in America, and only American military might just barely preserved freedom for our allies around the world. If ever any individual sailor even briefly flinched from his duty, then the Soviets almost certainly would visit disaster upon America. And the schoolteachers envisioned that many of us boys in time would join the Navy or another branch of the military.
Even after the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Iron Curtain, the existing generation of schoolteachers continued to instill a fierce opposition to all forms of Communism for several years. But when I converse with my youngest sibling, I find that she either never learned or quickly forgot the genocidal horrors of Communist countries throughout the previous century.
Nowadays, American schoolchildren celebrate, emulate, and revere the Chinese Communist Party and its many accomplishments. I wish that we could teach our children something of the horrors of the previous century as some form of socialism lies behind the large majority of the worst episodes of mass death that this world experienced. But even last year, when schools existed and operated, few teenagers even recognized Mao Zedung as the most lethal dictator in the history of the world. Today, Americans largely embrace the Maoist revolution and insurrection unfolding in our streets. At this time next year, America will be a fully Communist country, allied firmly with the People’s Republic of China, our overlord, and Americans, especially young adults, will embrace and celebrate the end of human freedom here and almost everywhere else on this planet.
Or, if everything happens perfectly right again, then we might reelect very narrowly Donald Trump and thus save the lives of countless ungrateful Americans from the Communist hordes for another four years.
Ralph Northam will not serve as governor of Virginia eighteen months hence. The constitution of the Commonwealth provides that no elected governor can serve consecutive terms.
And it’s too late to amend the constitution.
“Another Reason to Homeschool”
If enough people do that they will just make it illegal. Even if it’s not illegal, you will still have to teach their white-hating curriculum.
I enrolled my kids in private (Christian) from 1996 to 2010, then public until 2020, and now moving back to private. It was Ok in 2010 but deteriorated further.
But now my governor (CA) has closed the private schools too.
Ok, have them read Henry Hughes’, “Treatise on Sociology; Theoretical and Practical” and learn about Warranteeism. They should know the origin of the Dimocrat playbook.
I’ve been musing over you post.
One of the saddest outcomes of my daughter teaching in this Catholic school is that she now has a very perverted understanding of Catholicism. She has had no exposure to true believing Catholics.
Why isn’t the SPLC officially recognized as a subversive organization & cut off at the knees?
It sounds like they are tapped into bigtime federal and foundation money to rewrite history for public schools
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That's the whole point of introducing concepts to kids that young when they would NEVER conceive of them themselves.
Abuse
And they get up too early.
Tramping through the cold and snow.
With Corp.America going Stalin and Alinsky lately, it doesn’t surprise me that this will infect the school systems also.
We’re about a hair away from pulling our kids.
"The state Board of Education approves content standards and curriculum frameworks for history and social studies," a state education department spokesman said. "Local school boards are responsible for developing or adopting curriculum aligned with the state standards and framework." Loudoun County's school board did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Well, the statesmen of the Commonwealth have done a good thing with their Term Limits. Northam is a disaster.
The school systems have been infected decades ago.
What are you waiting for?
Covid-19 to shut everything down permanently I suppose.
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